another revealed truth

slicing through the haze

trigger warnings listed in opening author's note

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dream's having a bad day, again. it seems like every day is a bad one when they do theory in class. he just can't keep up with the other students in the room, even with his yellow overlay.

it's not an exaggeration to say he didn't even finish one paragraph of work and, when he asked tina to share her notes from the lecture, she had eight typed-out word pages of endless information.

so now dream is sat on the couch, his head ringing and stress overwhelming his senses as he tries to make sense of the mess of letters sprawled out before him. part of him just wants to copy and paste the notes for another time but he knows that won't actually help him, and he's already behind on work from this week.

it doesn't help that he got practically gaslit into a call with his dad, the older man spewing some shit about dream closing himself off and leaving his family behind. it's ridiculous, because he's constantly texting his mom and sister, his dad just needs to get it in his head that he's the only one dream tries to avoid.

"you have the overlays for a reason, dream, you have no excuse to still be falling behind."

dream wants to tell his dad that his fucking rambling is making the blond fall even further behind but he holds back with the knowledge that the snap will only get him chastised further.

he doesn't bother to reply, too focused on rereading the same line he's been stuck on for what feels like hours. dream highly doubts tina has written it wrong, but the word order is giving him a headache because he just can't grasp the meaning.

plus, he's already told his dad (twice now) that he was using the overlays. the older man doesn't believe him, claiming that dream's making up excuses for his own lack of effort, so dream is just trying to zone him out.

"have you managed to find a balance between college and fun yet?" his dad questions in a way that's so unreasonably teasing, and clearly not said in a light-hearted way, and dream has to close his eyes and take a long, steadying breath to stop himself from getting lippy.

"nope," he says. part of him sort of wants his dad to just go off on a big lecture so he can zone him out and focus on reading - it's not as easy when he's having to listen out for questions to answer.

"dream," he sounds disappointed, dream doesn't care. maybe tonight, when he lies awake contemplating his shit relationship with his dad, he'll care, but not right now. "that's really disappointing. i don't like the thought of you wasting your young years because you're too scared to go out and do things."

dream despises that his dad knows nothing about him. if the other man cared to actually get to know dream, he would understand that he isn't 'scared', that just isn't his scene. he's always been pretty quiet and reserved and, since the age of like eleven, all he's been interested in is art.

of course, sometimes dream contemplates if the excess of time spent trapped away on his own will become a regret when he is older, and he'll mourn the loss of opportunity to go out and get shitfaced and do stupid things. but, for now, he is happy like this - is that not what's important?

"i thought you would end out like this when you decided to stay with your mom most of the time, but i honestly thought that the weekends with me would fix you into someone who i was proud to call my son."